OMG OMG OMG

We already love LOL cats and icanhascheezburger.com, in fact I often give LOL cat images in my feedback on Etsy. But now my love ahs been firmly solidified because Sonya from icanhascheezburger featured our Apathy Bird pouch in her Storque article. Would it be ironic if I said that I was really excited about this?

Happy Etsyversary!

I had no idea it was Nerdbomber's three year Etsyversary until the lovely muchachaK convo'd me to say congrats. That just goes to show how well I keep track of dates.

It's been a good three years on Etsy. If there is one thing I've learned, it's that you get out of it what you put into it. The times when I was less diligent in making new things and listing, sales and visibility went down. When I'm very active on the site, sales go up. It is my goal to keep Nerdbomber active and visible not only on Etsy, but in other venues as well. We're slowly but surely branching out.

There have been many changes to Etsy and to Nerdbomber in the past three years. Everyone is progressing and we're all looking forward to three more productive years selling our fine wares. Now go buy something and help me celebrate!

Things have slowed down just a bit for me. I've been working on personal projects, giving lessons and nursing an overworked right arm.

I am continuing to list new items from my stock, so please keep checking nerdbomber.etsy.com. I have several patterns worked up for new bags, bu tI won't be able to complete them until my arm is recovered.

Until hten, you may also want to see the latest shop I'm drooling over: magicbeanbuyer. Her little Plinis are tres adorable. I wants them. I wants them all.

New Nerdy Newness

The newest items in the Nerdbomber shop are these really cool market tote bags. I made them from the Charlie pattern over at Burdastyle.com. Burdastyle is cool because the patterns are open source and they allow you to sell what you make. There is also a cool community willing to offer advice and comment on user creations. Burdastyle also shares a building with Etsy and they collaborate on a variety of projects including this video where they make *gasp* the Charlie bag. I plan to make several of these in various styles. I like the banana one and am anxious to see how it goes over.

I also have several of my own patterns in the works. It is illegal to use commercial patterns (Simplicity, McCall's, Amy Butler, etc.) for resale purposes, so it is important to know that all the items we sell on Nerdbomber are our own creations unless otherwise stated. For example, I clearly note that the Charlie bags are from the burdastyle pattern. All the other bags on our site are my own patterns. Isn't that special?

Anyhoo. Look for new things. Look for old things. Just come and look. Then buy something. You'll love it. I promise.

Iron Man FTW

Ok, so it's taken me a while but I've been busy. Last week my family saw Iron Man as a reward for my son's kindergarten graduation. I've got no frame of reference for Iron Man, no cute back story about my dad and after school cartoons, so I went in not sure what to expect. In fact, I thought Iron Man was one of the X-Men, and was wondering why he got his own movie. I'd heard that it was TEH BEST SUPERHERO MOVIE EVAR OMG!!!11!! but that's what people had said about nearly every superhero movie in the past eight years, so I didn't pay it much heed.



Let me say first that the most striking thing about this movie is how realistic the special effects are. Things that we know are impossible are within the realm of suspension of disbelief because they LOOK so real. Which brings me to another point, the violence is also very realistic (barring the last robotic suit battle which came off as pretty corny). That issue disturbed me because people were getting mowed down by machine guns and my son was laughing like something funny happened. This says more about the nature of violence as entertainment in America than the quality of the movie.



I'm a big proponent of taking a movie as it is and so it won't come as a big surprise that this won't be getting any screenwriting awards. The dialogue is predictable and suitably lame (especially during the big final battle which as you may have guessed I found disappointing). At one point I could swear I heard the baddie say "Ice try." This could be a mistake on my part, though.



Robert Downey Jr. Does an amazing job playing Tony Stark. He revels in playing the philandering Stark and pulls of the lovable jerk flawlessly. Even his revelation and turn of heart seem genuine in a movie where so many other things are just plain silly. The change comes when he realizes that his weapons have been confiscated by nefarious characters and are being used to evil ends. He decides, after some prompting by a throwaway character, to redeem himself and rectify the situation post haste. This scenario would be a groaner if not for the near perfect blend of cockiness, naivete and genius Downey gives Stark.



It's hard to stand out next to that kind of performance, even in a summer action flick. The other actors did a fair job, but couldn't compare to the obvious glee Downey exhibited in his role. Jeff Bridges was distracting for me personally for two reasons: he just looks like a nice guy and I kept seeing The Dude. Gwenyth Paltrow's character was all right (except for her lame name, but that was established long before the movie) until she has an "ooo shiny!" moment and had to run in stilettos.



It may seem like I'm being hard on this movie, and I'm not trying to be. It was fun, exciting and much better than most of the other super hero movies of the recent past. I suppose the only thing I was left wanting were some surprises. We all know the good guy has to win in the end, but we don't have to follow the same predictable formulas every time to get there. It's worth seeing if you haven't seen it already.

Fontstruct : Totally awesome website of fonty goodness

So, while perusing the web last week I found this lovely website: fontstruct. Skeptical at first, I signed up and started making a blockular font. Cut to: 5 hours later.... Still working on the font... even though it was a really basic font, I couldn't stop putting the blocks together. It's like Legos for adult designers.

This site is amazingly easy to use and perfect for making that 101th pixel font that you REALLY needed. The impressive amount of blocks that you can use makes fontstructing fun to do. Whenever I would be thinking "I need a block shaped like..." and then I would find one. You can do some interesting things with blocks and not even try! The only problem I found is that I wasn't sure about the scaling of the font. Should I make it small, or large? That's just me I suppose. Some people having way too much time on their hands and make full scale blackletter fonts. Which is just amazing and ridiculous at the same time.

Some of my favorite fonts are:
Tight
Teatral
Luchador
Brickd

Awesome. If you are really cool you will go build a font. But you don't have to, I understand. Mine isn't done yet (and is lame) but I will let you know when I make a non-lame font. I will have to think of a way to nerdify my font more-so than it is now.

Oh, That's Right!

I'm self promoting in this post and there's nothing you can do about it. Was that too confrontational? Too bad! Whatcha gonna do? Stop reading? Ok, don't do that. I'll be nice. I love what you're wearing today. Is it new?

I wanted to talk today about some things I have in my shop that, for whatever reason, don't sell well. I'm proud of all the products I make but some of them just don't seem to fly off the theoretical shelves.

Take these for example. I think I've only sold one wrist pouch on Etsy since I started listing (and relisting) them a few years ago. I recently sold several at a craft fair, so I know they don't completely suck. Why don't they sell? Is it my photos? The shape of the bag? They are very functional; I use mine quite a bit. They also look great with 1" pinback buttons on the color field at the top of the pouch.

Another item that just sits and collects digital dust are the crochet flower pins. They're cute and bright and funky. Who doesn't love that? They have really cute buttons in the center, that's a huge selling point. They make a bold statement on a jacket or bag and $6 isn't a huge risk to take on something as awesome as these pins. Maybe I should photograph them ON something.

The last item I wanted to highlight is something else that sold well in person, but hasn't done so great online. The Tshirt Totes are really bold and eye catching, but have flopped on Etsy. I thought people would like them for market bags or everyday totes. They are fully lined and interfaced for extra stability. I also have to comb the stores for just the right shirts to use on these bags. I have to find ones that are funny, bold, and in excellent condition. It isn't easy.

So in this post I've had a few mood swings: from confrontational to nice to whiny. I'm not usually this erratic. Or am I? Any way, if anyone has any ideas why these things aren't flying off the site, let me know. I'm always interested in suggestions.

Speed Racer OMG

My dad grew up in the 60s and was a big Speed Racer fan. He was the youngest of three children who had but one television in the house. In the race for after school television shows, my dad, much like his hero Speed, had to use cunning to make sure he got to watch his favorite cartoon. He set his sister's clock back an hour so she missed the Monkees and he and his brother could watch Speed Racer.

I didn't grow up watching Speed like my dad, but I saw the love he had for the series and enjoyed the few episodes I did see. I am familiar with anime and Speed Racer was really America's first introduction into the genre. The action, drama and plots are over the top, the colors pop and we are taken to a fantastic world that we want to be a part of. A lot of people feel nostalgia for these kinds of beloved shows (evidenced by the popularity of Comic Cons and Cosplay) so contemporary reworkings of favorite characters rarely lives up to standards. For evidence of this in Speed, look no further than the vomit inducing tragedy that is Speed Racer the Next Generation.

So my 6 year old son and I went yesterday to see the new Speed Racer film by the Wachowski brothers and I thought that at least it would be a fun kids film. I'd heard a lot of negative press about the movie, namely that the CG was poor and it was just too much, like a hyperactive kid's sugar rush. The film was completely over the top insane and it was perfect.

You can tell watching this movie that it was made by fans who understood what Speed is all about. They took the heart of the anime and punched it up, taking it to the brink of what film can do. It was like watching a live action comic book. The edits work much like the panels in graphic novels and it takes a moment to get used to how the film tells the story. In the beginning flashbacks are woven into an intense action sequence that the younger members of the audience might not completely get, but it serves to establish an essential drama in the rest of the film. The edits are jarring, but for a reason.

I don't want to get into the plot too much for a couple of reasons: one, fans of the series already know the plot. The Wachowskis were smart enough not to deviate from the original story. Two, it's very simple: Speed has to win the race fair and square. Everything that falls in between are details that are easy to geek out over, but aren't necessarily what makes this a movie to see.

What most impressed me was that it was intense in every respect without being too much. It's weird to talk about restraint in a movie like Speed Racer, but it could have so easily been cheesy. The sweetness wasn't sappy. The sincerity wasn't forced (or insincere). The action was crazy but believable in the world of the movie. The bad guys were bad, but not too goofy. The comedy was slapstick, but not the kind that makes you groan.

One thing I did find distracting: Susan Sarandon's boobs. I had no idea she had such huge knockers. All the clothes they had her in made her boobs look really big and it was hard to look away. Did they do that on purpose? Oh yeah, and one of the bad guys says, "turd" twice, which is my all time most hated word. It hurts me to even type it. Ugh.

This is a movie I will definitely see again in the theater. I don't remember the last time I had so much fun at the movies. If you go in looking for flaws, you can probably find them, but that's true with anything. Go in open to the fun and you won't be disappointed.

Pengcath is watching you pee

One seller whose shop I like to peek in on from time to time is pengcath. Although I haven't actually made a purchase from this shop yet, it's on my list of things to do.

Her shop has lots and lots of really cute illustrations, water colors, cards and stickers. Her work has tons of charm and is executed with a whimsy that isn't sickeningly sweet. Most impressive are the cats. This is a woman who gets cats and it shows in her art. Her work is very expressive and you can see the personality of her subject come through. I can only image the wonderment that would be aroused by actually having a piece of her work.

She's got a wide variety of products to appeal to all sorts. So what are you waiting for? Go check it out. She is found online and in B&M stores all over. For all the information you need to find her work, visit her site at cathypeng.com.

Book Review: The Zombie Survival Guide

I'm not afraid of zombies, but I do have a feeling of high anxiety about them. Anyone who knows me knows that I can't watch zombie films, even during the daytime, without going into a state of paranoia about the iminent zombie uprising.

Part of my anxiety comes from a legitimate (I feel) concern about a fast spreading viral pandemic. I think we kind of tune out just how many people there are in the world milling about to spread diseases around. The zombie craze feeds into this fear of the unstoppable virus that overwhelms vast populations in a short amount of time.

I had been eyeing this book on the store shelves for some time but didn't buy it because I told myself it was silly. But when Lisa gave it to me a few days ago I was actually releived to have it in my hands. At last I would know what to do when Z-day arrives! I knew pretty well what not to do from watching movies. Anything those guys did ended in disaster.

This book really helped dispell those lingering anxieties I'd had about the zombie invasion. Author Max Brooks' treatment of his undead subject is so clinical and matter of fact, you almost forget that the topic is quite grotesque. He demystifies the zombie myth, even going so far as to name the virus which causes zombification. This guy wrote a whole book about zombies and he isn't worried, so why should I be? It's a bit like when you were a kid and were scared of garden snakes until your dad got out the encyclopedia and made you read whole entry on garden snakes. Or maybe that was just my childhood. The point is that once you know all the details, whatever you were scared of isn't so frightening anymore.

Brooks' tips aren't all practical for immediate application, though. I won't be building a ten foot high concrete wall around my yard any time soon. That isn't a huge problem, though, because Brooks offers several options and scenarios for self defense against the living dead. He goes through weaponry, travel, home defense, and many other issues that may arise with the undead.

If you, like me, get uneasy on the topic of zombies and are the type to peek out the window to check for zombies in yard before letting the dogs out at night, then this book may help to relieve some fears. The textbook style of the book may be a turnoff for some readers. The book doesn't revel in its subject, but rather takes a distanced and decidedly unfunny perspective. You may want to flip through it first before making the purchase.